Abba Isaiah said "Nothing is so useful to the beginner as insults. The beginner who bears insults is like a tree that is watered every day."

He also said to those who were making a good beginning by putting themselves under the direction of the Holy Fathers, "as with purple dye, the first colouring is never lost." And, "just as young shoots are easily trained back and bent, so it is with beginners who live in submission."

He also said "A beginner who goes from one monastery to another is like an animal that jumps this way and that, for fear of the halter."